


if you leave

by marquis



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: I am warning you, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, i cried while writing it, several times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:19:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marquis/pseuds/marquis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times, Louis makes Liam a promise. Liam wishes he would have promised back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [serendipitee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitee/gifts).



> I listened to Daughter's album "If You Leave" the entire time I was writing this. May want to give it a listen just so you know what you're getting yourself into. Please read and consider the warnings.
> 
> This is the fic that I was trying to write when I ended up making "This Would Be It." This is the fic I was trying to write when I wrote any number of my LiLo fics, actually, but I never actually wrote it before because it made me sad to think about.
> 
> (Gifted to Mel because she might not see it otherwise.)

When Liam’s family moves, there isn’t much forethought. They’re told that a new program is being developed at a hospital miles and miles away, and perhaps it’s something to think about, because it could help with his kidneys. His mom has an apartment all sorted by the next month, and everything is worked out. Ruth and Nicola will stay behind with Dad, and Liam and Mum will go live in the city for a while, just to see if the program actually works.

They’ll work out the rest from there, his mum tells him while they’re loading up the car with boxes of his things.

He’s fourteen years old and tired of visiting the doctor. He’s tired of being picked on for his size and not being able to do anything about it. Moving might present the opportunity he needs to finally recreate himself. The boy next door waves goodbye as the car pulls out, and Liam smiles back, happy at the prospects being offered to him.

It takes him about a week to realize that nothing’s going to change. It’s the summer holidays, so he doesn’t get to meet anyone new. Everyone living in his complex is old or dying or both, and that’s not too difficult to wrap the mind around; Liam’s mother had researched it, had found the closest possible opening to the hospital.

And the hospital is no fun, either. He spends all of his time sitting in an uncomfortable chair, listening to music and ignoring whatever it is that his mum and the doctor are talking about. There’s all sorts of things about preliminary procedures and possible risks, and is she sure, is _he?_ but no one ever talks to him directly, so he isn’t even sure why he goes.

There are times, even, when he’s sent _out of the room_. As if he doesn’t already know what they’re talking about. It’s infuriating. On one such day, he’s sitting in the lobby of the children’s wing, humming to himself just to annoy everyone else there. It’s kind of rude, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Hey!” a voice exclaims from beside him, loud even over his music. Liam looks over; there’s a boy, probably around his age, looking up at him. “I know that song!” He’s tiny, so little that there’s no way he isn’t a patient. Liam wonders how he didn’t notice that he had company and then he scolds himself for not sitting on the end of the row. He’d thought for sure he had.

Liam can’t bring himself to be obviously rude to another patient. He pulls out an earbud and offers a small smile. “You do?”

The boy hums the next few bars. He’s a little quiet, but he’s in tune anyway. It matches the melody playing from Liam’s headphones. “Right? That one. I don’t think I know the name, but I’ve heard it before. I think my mum plays it in the car sometimes.”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Offering up anything else might end up dragging him deeper into a conversation. Liam’s really not in the mood for that sort of thing right now, anyway; he doesn’t need to be reminded that the only friends he’s ever had are the ones he met in waiting rooms or hospital beds.

“My name’s Louis.”

“Liam.”

“You’re not very talkative, are you?”

Shrug. “No, I guess not.”

Louis shrugs back, probably mocking him. “That’s alright. I can do plenty of talking for the both of us. My mum says that my mouth likes to make up for all the work the rest of my body can’t do.”

There’s more after that, but Liam doesn’t hear it. He’s too busy letting that catch up with him, looking at the boy _in a wheelchair_ and wondering how he never noticed that. It’s hard not to see it now, the way his legs are hidden in joggers two sizes too big and his toes drag along the floor in their overlarge shoes.

When he finally notices that Louis has, in fact, stopped talking, it must have been a while since the silence fell. Louis is watching him with a wry smile. He shrugs again, and Liam feels like a massive dick. “S’alright, you know. I don’t mind your staring. Been like this my whole life; Mum tells me that I wasn’t supposed to live for longer than a minute, but here I am!”

Liam wants to tell Louis that he understands that much, at least, but he feels like it would be rude of him. It’s like saying that what Louis is dealing with isn’t so bad after all, saying that he’s not supposed to be alive either, and Liam already feels bad enough having tried to ignore him. “No, I’m – I’m sorry. I didn’t notice before you said…”

“Liam!”

That’s his mum. She walks over and rests a hand on his shoulder, smile strained like it always is after talking with the doctors. “Liam, sweetie, it’s time to go home.”

He – well, he would like to go home, really, but home is hours away, with his dad and his sisters. Right now, the waiting room seems more friendly and welcoming than the tiny apartment he’s going to have to go back to.

His mum wouldn’t appreciate if he said that out loud. “Bye, Louis,” he says instead.

“You can’t leave, Liam! If you leave, I think I’ll die!” He clings to Liam’s arm and pulls a ridiculous face. Liam feels himself smiling for the first time in a week, but he still pulls Louis’ arms away and offers a little wave when he stands up. Louis frowns at him but offers a wave in return before crossing his arms over his chest.

“He seemed like a nice boy,” Liam’s mum comments as they climb into the car. “Do you two know each other from something? Does he live by us?”

Liam shakes his head and buckles his seatbelt. “Dunno, Mum,” he replies. It’s the last thing they say before they pull into the lot outside their flat.

\--

The second time he meets Louis is near the end of that summer, quite a while after they last spoke. Liam’s mom doesn’t seem to think that the risks are worth the possible benefits, and Liam’s been told that this is his last appointment before they really _do_ go home. All of his things are packed back up in his boxes and he’s feeling happier than he has since they moved the first time.

He’s standing outside the doors of the hospital, bouncing on the balls of his feet with his hands shoved in his pockets. Someone tugs on his sleeve and he looks down, expecting a little kid looking for their parent or something silly like that.

“You came back,” Louis says, like it’s some kind of surprise.

It takes a minute to recognize him, even though it shouldn’t; Liam doesn’t know many people stuck in wheelchairs. “Yeah,” he says, a little bit confused, and then brighter: “Hey, look! You didn’t die, after all.”

“They had to do CPR, thank you,” Louis retorts, squinting. Liam wonders if it’s supposed to be intimidating. “You seem to be in a terribly good mood today, Mr. Liam, considering you’ve just met a ghost.”

Liam nods. “Yeah, I’m almost done here, I think. I’ll get to go back home after today.”

“Why were you even here in the first place?” Louis asks, before Liam can say anything else. “If you get to go home, does that mean they fixed you? Were you even broken? You seem like a perfectly fit lad to me, anyway.”

Thing is, Liam’s almost fifteen now. He’s maybe started to come to the realization that he doesn’t just get butterflies over a pretty girl, and. Louis’ got very nice eyes. He tries to hide his blush by swiping his fringe out of his face, but Louis’ grin says that he saw it, and maybe it says that he knows the feeling too, Liam’s not sure on that one.

“Thanks,” he mutters. And then he remembers that there was more to it than a compliment, that Louis asked him a question. “Um, kidneys, by the way,” Liam stutters out, and Louis looks up at him curiously. “They wanted to see if they could get the broken one to, um. Start back up again. My mum doesn’t think it’ll work.”

Louis nods sagely. “They thought they could fix my spine, too,” he comments. “But as it is, I’ve got a bunch of sisters who need food and a mum who can’t afford the treatment. So we’ve given up on that, and now she’s trying to find a job outside of the city so we can afford where we live.”

“I’m sorry,” says Liam.

“I’m sorry, too. But my mum doesn’t like me to say so.”

Liam’s mum comes out of the hospital then, talking to another woman dressed in scrubs. Liam has never seen her before, not that he remembers; he wonders what kind of doctor she is. And then Louis smiles and reaches his arms out like a toddler asking to be picked up and Liam puts two and two together.

“It was nice meeting you, Jay,” his mum says, holding out a hand. Louis’ mom laughs and goes in for a hug, disregarding the outstretched hand completely.

“I think I can honestly say that the pleasure was all mine,” she states sincerely, chin tucked over Liam’s mum’s shoulder.

When they pull away, Liam turns to walk to the car. Louis grabs onto his arm and pulls on him, though, and he finds himself stumbling in the exact _wrong_ direction.

“Don’t take my Leeyum away!” Louis cries, clinging tightly. “If my Leeyum leaves me, I think I might die!”

Liam blushes so hard he thinks it must be permanent. Their mothers share a look, lips pursed and eyebrows raised, and Liam doesn’t even have the energy to try and figure out exactly what that might mean.

\--

Liam’s family isn’t incredibly rich, but they have _enough_ money. They’ve got a house with more rooms than they really need, anyway, and that is apparently a good reason for his mum to go around picking up charity cases. Louis and his mum _and_ his four sisters move in over the same summer that Nicola moves out and Ruth goes to uni; Liam is about to turn sixteen, and there Louis is in the room down the hall to fill up all the empty space that Liam’s sisters left behind.

_Louis’_ sisters, of course, take up plenty of space all on their own. Liam isn’t used to having so many people in the house, and neither is his father, but they make do. It helps to manage the house, says his mum, having another woman there to cook and clean and watch the kids. She can go off and work full-time now.

Liam’s dad doesn’t say that taking in five kids – one of whom is paralyzed from the waist down – is more expensive than most salaries. He only thinks it sometimes, Liam suspects.

(There’s more to it than that, but Liam isn’t supposed to know about it. He isn’t supposed to know about how Jay has been struggling to make ends meet and how they were about to be kicked onto the streets. Even Louis didn’t know that bit; Liam overheard his parents talking when they thought he couldn’t hear.)

They don’t have to pay for school, at least; Louis’ mum has decided to teach them herself, in her spare time. Apparently she’s been doing it for years, with Louis, even while she was working as a nurse or a midwife or whatever it was that she did. Liam wonders how anyone can possibly have enough patience to pull that one off.

Louis turns out to be more ridiculous than Liam might’ve ever imagined, griping and groaning and needing to be babysat _all the time_. It’s a good thing that Liam doesn’t have much of a social life, because if he did, it would be pretty unfortunate having to turn everyone down all the time to watch over the current ward of his house.

“Do you hate us being here?” Louis asks one day, looking at Liam from where he’s lying on his bed. Liam is trying – and failing – to get his maths homework done. “No one ever asked you if we could come barging in. I imagine it’s pretty annoying.”

Liam shrugs. “I don’t mind. Sometimes it’s annoying, like when you have to piss or one of your sisters thinks it’s a good idea to play dress up, but it’s nice most of the time.” He looks up from his homework and meets Louis’ gaze, hopes that the shivery feeling underneath his skin isn’t visible outside his own head. “I’ve never really had a lot of friends.”

“Scrawny little lad like you, I imagine everyone chewed you right up and spat you back out,” Louis mutters, tossing a balled up post-it note at Liam and missing terribly. “Fresh meat, easy meal, hakuna matata, what have you.”

“I think you’ve watched Lion King too many times in the past few days, Lou. We need to get you out of the house.” Liam’s about to get an earful of exactly why that isn’t happening when the timer on his watch goes off, and oh. It’s time for him to go on a run.

Louis actually whines when Liam starts to put his books into his bag. Liam looks up at him, confused. “What? Do I – are you in pain or something?”

Never before has Liam been on the receiving end of a look so condescending. (That’s a terrible, awful lie; he gets these looks all the time as of late. He tries to act like they don’t make his stomach flip, but he thinks Louis may know anyway.) “Liam Payne, if you leave me to go _running_ , I swear to god I will die right here in this bed and you will not be invited to my funeral.”

“Come with me, then,” Liam tells him, standing up and stretching his arms above his head. His shoulders pop in time with Louis’ eyes, he thinks, and he might laugh a little bit but it’s not like Louis hears.

“That’s cruel. That is cruel and horrible to say, and we are not friends anymore.”

The wheelchair is folded up against the wall. Liam clicks it open. “I only meant that I would push you in front of me. Might help me build some muscle or something. Do you want to come?”

Louis’ smile is bright enough to be blinding. Liam has to look away. “Well, I don’t exactly have a choice, do I? If you leave, I’ve promised to die.”

It’s a lot easier to pick Louis up and set him into the chair than it was when they first met, Liam thinks.

\--

He really, _really_ doesn’t want to leave. The car is all packed with his things and everyone is gathered on the front lawn, ready to see him off, but the bubbly excitement he felt earlier this morning has been replaced by heavy dread in the pit of his stomach.

He does not want to go off to uni.

There’s no way to say as much without sounding like he’s ungrateful, though; his parents are paying for him to go to a good school, and he’s really not so far away from home. He can drive home when he gets lonely or when he feels homesick, they’ve told him that he can, but. It’s not them that he’s afraid of leaving behind.

He hugs everyone in turn, all of the little girls and Jay and his mum and dad. Ruth and Nicola aren’t there, but he doesn’t mind; they’ll see plenty of each other over the holidays, certainly. The last one to hug is Louis, sitting in his wheelchair in the front lawn.

Liam opens his mouth to say something, but he doesn’t get the chance. Louis has him down within seconds, arms wrapped tightly around his neck and fingers digging into his jumper. “I know it’s selfish of me, but Liam, goddammit, _please_ don’t leave,” he says. Liam really hopes that he imagines the cracks and wavers of Louis’ voice, the way he can’t seem to hold himself together. Louis takes an uneasy breath. “If you leave me, I swear to god I’ll die.”

It’s something that he’s said hundreds or thousands of times, ever since he first met Liam. It’s their way of saying goodbye, Liam knows, but there’s something heavy about it this time around. The idea of not coming home to see Louis every day, the thought of being so far away, makes his insides twist uncomfortably into knots. He doesn’t like it.

“I’ll come back, Lou. Promise. You’ll see me in a few weeks.”

Louis hugs him tighter. Liam feels a little breathless. “Don’t go, Li.”

It’s the hardest thing Liam has ever done, pulling out of Louis’ arms. He forces a smile and swats at his eyes, hands still resting on Louis’ shoulder. “It’s okay, Lou. I promise I’ll be back, and I’ll buy you all kinds of alcohol when I do. You can forget I was ever gone.”

Louis smiles, too; it’s more than a little watery. “You’ll be getting pissed, as well. I looked it up; you’re allowed to drink.”

“Of course you did,” he says, and then, “maybe I will. We’ll see how it all works out.”

That’s all he can handle. Liam pulls away and tries to convince himself that it isn’t so bad, climbing into the car and turning the key in the ignition. His parents wave to him from where they stand on the front lawn, and he reminds himself over and over again that it will only be for a little while.

\--

“Mum!” Liam calls, bursting in. Everything is decorated for Christmas, red and green and gold dancing around in front of him. His mother is standing just inside the door, waiting for him. She doesn’t even get to say anything before he’s pulling her into a hug, lifting her up and spinning her around.

She looks a little dazed when he sets her down, blinking up at him like he’s a stranger. He decides it’s a good idea to explain himself.

“My kidney’s fixed, Mum!” he informs her, grinning so wide that his face hurts. “I meant – I wanted to tell you before, but I thought it might be better as a present. I went to the doctor’s, they checked. I’m all better!” He presses a kiss to her cheek and makes for the hallway. “Hold on, I’m going to go surprise Lou!”

“Liam, I don’t-” she calls after him, but he’s already too far to understand what she’s saying.

The hallway seems a little empty compared to the living room, but he thinks that it must be because Louis’ room is the most spectacular one every year. His birthday is, above all, the best present they’ve ever been given, and Liam is determined to give him the very best present this year.

He’s going to say that he’s fixed, and then he’s going to tell Louis that he loves him. Louis probably knows already, should have known for a long time now, but Liam _needs_ to tell him about it. In person. So he can see the way Louis’ face lights up.

The door opens easily, and Liam rushes inside. “Lou-”

There’s nothing there.

The room is empty, the walls barren, bed made up like it never is when Louis is around.

Liam can see the floor.

Louis isn’t here.

“Liam, I’m – we wanted to tell you in person, make it easier on you,” he hears his mum say, but it’s like hearing something underwater. This doesn’t make sense. Louis was never the one who left Liam; he’d always be right where Liam set him down, right where Liam left him, ready to pick up where they’d ended last time. How could this be different? Why would he be somewhere _else_?

Liam turns to face his mother slowly. He doesn’t know what his face looks like, but he’s not sure he wants to. “Mum, where’s – where’s Louis? Where are the girls?”

His mother takes a small step toward him, like she’s afraid he’ll run away if she moves too quickly. Liam isn’t entirely sure that it won’t still happen anyway. “The girls, they – Jay couldn’t stand the idea of staying here, Liam.”

“Why? We – they need us. This is their _home_.” Liam’s having trouble wrapping his head around this, figuring out exactly what it is that he did wrong. “Mum, what _happened_?”

The pieces click together very, very slowly, but they get there eventually. Liam digests what his mother said in its entirety, how she mentioned the girls and she talked about Jay but she never said _Louis,_ she never said what happened to his Louis, and how they couldn’t stand to be in the house anymore, and.

Liam chokes on a sob.

His mother rushes forward, enveloping him in a hug. He collapses into it. “What – how? Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” he demands, fisting his hands into her shirt.

“I’m so sorry, love,” she says, but it isn’t enough and they both know it.

She explains it to him later, how Louis started having heart problems shortly after he left. How his heart gave out once and they saved him, how he made them all promise not to bring Liam home if it happened again. He’d said that Liam _didn’t need to see it_ , and what a load of bull _shit_ that was.

Liam needed.

He needed.

He needed _something_. He needed proof. He needed to see Louis one more time, rolled out underneath the tree and yelling out “Surprise!” while Liam cried and told him it wasn’t funny, not at all. He needed to see him lying in a casket, even, just to convince himself that this was really happening.

Liam needed to say _goodbye_ and _I love you_ and, most importantly, _I never should have left_.

Because Louis had been saying it all along, and Liam had never been listening. He was listening now, though: _If you leave me, I swear I’ll die._

He wanted to say it to Louis, too. He wanted to be the one to demand Louis stay. But Louis had left him, and he was still here, and no matter what he did, Louis was going to stay gone.


End file.
